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The Music in It

Saturday, December 7, 2013

This week’s guest blogger, Diane Lockward,
will be familiar to many of you from previous posts. Diane shares craft tip #5, which she wrote for her book The
Crafty Poet. This tip for poets focuses on language and the process of
finding the right words for your poems.

Note: The
Crafty Poet is a poetry tutorial designed to inform and inspire poets. It contains
model poems with prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by fifty-six
poets, including thirteen former and current state Poets Laureate. There are
also sample poems from an additional forty-five poets. The book has been named a Best Book for Writers by Poets & Writers (Poets & Writers Best Books) and is geared to both experienced
and aspiring poets. I recommend it highly as a perfect present for the poets on
your holiday gift list.

From Diane Lockward

One of the qualities that distinguishes an
outstanding poem from a merely competent one is language that sizzles, sings,
and surprises. And yet too many of us settle for ordinary language when
extraordinary language is available and free to everyone.

Consider the diction of John Donne in
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning." The poet startles us by using
mathematical language to describe two lovers: If they be two they are two so
/ As stiff twin compasses are two; / Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show /
To move, but doth, if th’ other do. In another love poem, "The
Good-Morrow," Donne pulls diction from the field of cartography: Let
sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone; / Let maps to other, worlds on worlds
have shown; / Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one. Donne
often fused together language from two seemingly unrelated fields. If you haven’t
tried this yet, why not?

Consider, too, the diction of Gerard Manley
Hopkins in "Pied Beauty" where the speaker gives thanks for dappled
things— / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; / For rose-moles all in
stipple upon trout that swim… Such language is delicious in our mouths and
a joy to speak aloud.

For a more contemporary voice, listen to
Sharon Olds in "One Year" as the speaker describes a visit to her
father’s grave: I saw the speedwell on the ground with its horns, / the
coiled ferns, copper-beech blossoms, each / petal like that disc of matter which
/ swayed, on the last day, on his tongue. / Tamarack, Western hemlock, /
manzanita, water birch / with its scored bark… Notice the precision of the
language. No vague tree for this poet but rather the specific names of
trees, each one of them adding more music, interest, and imagery to the poem.
Olds, like her predecessors, never settles for easy language.

Nor should you settle for the first words
that come to you; go in search of the best words. But where to find those best
words? You might start with the catalogs, unordered and unwanted, that fill up
your mailbox. Don’t be so fast to toss them out. Some of them may contain new
vocabulary for your poems. Hang on to that flower brochure, the Harry and David
catalog, the circular full of ads for local restaurants.

A simple Google search will often lead you
to specialized websites where you can find a feast of language. Let’s say you’re
writing a poem about blueberries. Googling just might lead you to the website
for the Gierke Blueberry Farm in Michigan and then to esoteric information
about blueberries, some tasty recipes, and words like cultivars,
domesticated, antioxidant, and these lovely names of different kinds of
blueberries: Rabbiteye, Primadonna, Sapphire, and Snowchaser.

Wikipedia is a great online source for new diction.
Let’s say you’re writing a poem about a frog. Take a piece of paper with you to
the computer and search Wikipedia for “frog.” As you read through relevant articles, jot down words
such as carnivorous, amphibian, proto-frog, vertebrate, glandular, and
planktivorous. Use some of those words in your poem.

Keep your eyes and ears open. And, of
course, keep a notebook where you store words you’ve discovered in catalogs,
articles, and books, as well as words you’ve heard on the street, on TV, in a
speech. You never know when you might need those words. They might generate a
new poem or they might reinvigorate a failed draft.

Wonderful suggestions on diction, Diane. The poet should always be listening and looking around for new words.

Like many poets, words alone can inspire me to write a poem. Just browsing dictionaries, encyclopedias, random books on archaic words or how to paint or plant can be inspiring. When my wife got into quilting, I became fascinated by the words used in it and pulled them into a few poems--the names of fabrics, the names of certain processes.

Keeping a notebook as Diane suggests is always a good idea. You never know when a word or phrase, idly noted sometime prior, may become part of a key image in a poem you had no idea you were going to write.

WELCOME!

THE MUSIC IN IT

"The Music In It" is a blog for anyone interested in poets and poetry—the craft and the community.

The title comes from Countee Cullen, who wrote: "My poetry, I should think, has become the way of my giving out whatever music is in me."

Look for a new prompt or guest blogger each week, usually posted on Saturdays, and check the archives for older prompts and posts. Be sure to click on the poetry-related links in the sidebar.

Thanks for your visits and comments. Enjoy!

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A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing At All

My new book, A LIGHTNESS, A THIRST, OR NOTHING AT ALL, is now available at Amazon.com! Click on the cover image to order.

Hardcover: 80 pages (53 Prose Poems)

Publisher: Welcome Rain Publishers

ISBN-10: 156649396X

ISBN-13: 978-1566493963

… In language so subtly pitched, paced and modulated it captures our attention without drawing attention to itself, Kenny draws us into discovering that what never changes is all around us in the ever-changing world, that one is only approachable, knowable, bearable through the other. We trust her to be our guide because her vision is so unwavering. (Martin J. Farawell, Director, Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival)

Intensely focused, compressed, and sharp-edged, these prose poems by Adele Kenny take the spiritual journey into heightened awareness of experience, place, and identity. Deliberate fragments, the language of dreams, and an occasional nod to the surreal combine with Kenny’s signature elements of striking imagery, lyrical precision, and compelling immediacy to inform an enhanced vision of the ways in which the interior life intersects with the outside world. These poems startle, surprise, and tell us things about ourselves that we didn’t know.

BOOK TRAILER

Poetry: Who Needs It?

Why Do We Read and Write Poetry?

RECEIVED & RECOMMENDED

1. The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost by Michael T. Young (A stunning collection of poems by a brilliant young poet–elegance, grace, spirit, and heart, along with an incredible command of language and craft.) www.michaeltyoung.com

2. Jackleg Opera, Collected Poems, 1990-2013 by BJ Ward

(New and collected poems by the amazing BJ Ward; a treat to have so much of BJ's work under one cover, a joy to be moved by his words and his story.)

About What Matters

"In Adele Kenny's finely wrought meditations on grief and loss, she never forgets that she's a maker of poems. What Matters straddles two of the exigencies of the human condition: diminishment and endurance. It abounds with poems that skillfully earn their sentiments." (Stephen Dunn, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry)

"These are poems that come to (poetic) grips with the issues of grief, fear, and death ... focused in a new and strong way." (Gerald Stern, National Book Award in Poetry)

Some of My Books

CHAUCER KENNY

Chaucey is my Yorkshire Terrier, bred from champion lines by Wingold Yorkies. He's named for Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales and the father of English literature. I call him my own CANTERBURY TAIL.

Chaucey

POETRY

"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales,

the sweet pea that has run wild..."

(Boris Pasternak)

BLOG AUTHOR PROFILE

I’m the author of twenty-three books (poetry & nonfiction) with poems published in journals worldwide, as well as in books and anthologies from Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. I’ve worked as a guest poet for numerous agencies, have twice been a featured reader in the Dodge Poetry Festival, and my awards include two poetry fellowships from the NJ State Arts Council, the 2012 International Book Award for Poetry, and the Distinguished Alumni Award (Kean University). A former professor of creative writing in the College of New Rochelle’s Graduate School, I’m founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor for Tiferet Journal. I’m active in readings and conduct both agency-sponsored and private poetry workshops. An animal lover, I’ve raised three Yorkshire Terriers (Dylan, Yeats, and Bijou), numerous exotic birds, and am now happily raising Chaucer, my fourth Yorkie.

Save the Words

POETS' BIOS

SOMETIMES YOU FIND A QUOTE ...

Sometimes you find a quote that says it all. Here's one that does it for me: "In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes." (Basho, trans. by Lucien Stryk)

ON THE TIP OF YOUR TONGUE

Ever find yourself in the middle of a poem and unable to find that one perfect word? Here's the link for a site that provides synonyms, antonyms, related words, similar sounding words, and much more. Easy to use!

POET? POEM?

Are you looking for a particular poem or a poet whose name you can't recall? Do you remember a few lines or phrases but can’t remember the poet or poem?

These sites may be helpful:

LIFE LINES

From the Academy of American Poets – a great site that contains lines of poetry, along with notes on situations that summoned these lines to mind for the readers who submitted them. (You can even browse the “Life Lines” by poet.) Wonderful sharing!

CHAPBOOK PUBLISHERS

Here's a site that offers a comprehensive list of chapbook publishers. I'm not familiar with all, so make sure you do your homework before sending a submission (and beware of vanity presses that charge you a fee for publishing your book).

RECOMMENDED READING

This huge and reasonably priced anthology (with commentary by Harold Bloom) covers six centuries of important British and American poetry and is a must-have for all poets and poetry lovers. Click on the book to order.